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THE TRAFFIC FIELD

PART I

THE INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT

J. W. COBEY

Traffic Manager, National Cash Register Company,

Dayton, O.

THE TRAFFIC FIELD

PART I

THE INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Traffic Management-Progressive and Nonprogressive
Types-New School-Former Views-Practical Training—
Magnitude of Plant-Area-Population-Post Offices-Rail-
road Stations-Transportation Instrumentalities-Division
of Labor-Transportation Charges-Uniform Practice-
Classification Inconsistencies-Necessity of Audit-Trans-
portation as a Commodity-F. O. B. Sales versus Delivered
Costs-Legal Obligations.

Practically everything to have value must be moved. from places of abundance to places of shortage or demand. Traffic work or traffic management is concerned with this distribution, effecting it by the most expeditious means and at the least expense.

The increasing importance of adequate transpor tation facilities, the intelligent employment of those available for use, and common-sense railway regulation are issues vital to the hour.

The solution of these questions can be accomplished only by a recognition of the fact that the success of each of the several factions concerned, the railroad, the shipping public, and the government, is to a great degree contingent on the success of the others.

In the past the shipping public and those concerned with the operation of our railroads have resembled hostile camps, with a public utility commission acting as the vacillating ally first of one faction and then of another.

Fortunately, the "public-be-damned" type of railroad official, the "soak-the-railroad" type of shippers, and the narrow-minded, nonprogressive public utility commissioner are types that are rapidly disappearing. They are no longer welcome in the forum of modern business efficiency. Rapidly supplanting these types is the broad-minded and progressive technically trained man who rigorously demands his own rights and respects those of opposing interests.

The bigger men in the industrial traffic field do not look upon the transportation companies as private interests separate from their own, to be exploited at will. Instead, they now regard them as a plant auxiliary or affiliated industry, to be maintained and administered with an efficiency that will enable them to assemble and distribute the wares of industry with a minimum amount of inconvenience and expense.

This new attitude has resulted in creating a new profession, that of scientific traffic management. From the proficient graduates of this school must come the needed reforms in the greatest transportation machine that has ever been developed in the history of the world.

The title of "traffic manager" has been a much used, and at the same time a much abused, title. This abuse is not confined to the general public, but in many cases the traffic manager himself is ignorant of what his title implies.

In the minds of many, for example, the industrial

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